Vol 8: Hocus Pocus; Psychics, My Lovelys & Wagon Wheels
I write this post with unusual trepidation. Much like a lapsed Catholic, haunted by guilt and self-doubt, I am wary of going too hard on psychics. I mean, what if they’re right? What if they can channel demons and send them my way? Like most, this is a subject I fear. We might suspect (hope even) that it’s hocus pocus, but can never really be sure. So, I will caveat this at the outset – if you’re listening ghosts, ghouls, and demons, I’m not saying for sure you don’t exist. I don’t need a demon-stration, as it were. This is about something else, principally the spokespeople for the Other Side, and my experiences of them, ranging from the weird, to the fraudulent, to the narcissistic.
It’s a family affair.
The occult is in my blood (or perhaps something less exotic like a genetic defect). One side of my family has gypsy heritage. The other side a wide assortment of psychic explorers. My great grandmother was a hedge witch. My grandfather, a carpenter who wore a flat cap and sports jacket, was obsessed with UFOs. That fed into other avenues of exploration from mind control to the supernatural and regular family outings to haunted hot-spots. In his later years he wouldn’t consume any product with an “E” number in it or drink tap water, stopping just short of a tinfoil hat.
My grandmother had a relative in Cornwall who we called Auntie but who was so far removed to be almost etheric. She was a well-known psychic in Cornwall, along the lines of Doris Stokes, who spoke like a pirate and looked like Thora Hird. She’d only visit us at Xmas, and, along with her artery busting clotted cream (which must have kept her in new clients), she’d bring a Ouija board. I used to love her not least because my dad would go berserk and there’d be an almighty scene, loud enough to raise the dead. While our neighbours watched the Morecambe and Wise Xmas special, we’d spend Xmas night attempting to contact the other side. I have to admit that even at a young age, I wasn’t entirely convinced. It was the 70s when the lights regularly flickered for economic reasons, and we never heard much more than the neighbours’ TV through the walls. In her later years she took to the streets of Penzance, foretelling the end of the World and was eventually sectioned.
Paranormal Retching
I’ve voluntarily consulted a psychic twice. The first time I was in my early 20s. at a crossroads with difficult decisions to make. So, I made an appointment with a local fortune teller who came highly recommended. On the phone, she sounded much like my Cornish auntie, calling me “my lovely”, and speaking at speed, layering sentence upon sentence so quickly you were never quite sure what had gone before. Her bungalow had its fair share of brass ornaments and a wagon wheel next to the front door. She was a big lady, probably early 70s, & greeted me in a colourful tent dress, probably the closest thing you could get to a kaftan in C&A in those days.
Once inside the bungalow, things took a turn for the strange as she grabbed her throat and began to choke. I couldn’t decide if she was in anaphylactic shock or if this was part of the fortune telling experience. I located her telephone to call for an ambulance which swiftly calmed things down. With a waft of her hand, she led me to a Tarot laden table, and explained that on meeting me, she had picked up on the energy of someone who had choked to death. This person, I was told, was my spirit guide. We turned some Tarot cards and arrived at vast generalisations about my life, none of which was exactly true but vague enough to be almost true. It didn’t help much, even the spirits didn’t know what I should do with my life.
Year later I walked into a new age bookshop in Darwin, Australia and the guy behind the counter started choking. Once he had gathered himself, he told me my spirit guide had choked to death! Suitably spooked, I paid for a Tarot session with him. He told me I would travel a lot which, in the circumstances, was probably self-evident. I saw him a few weeks later in the street. He told me he was selling the business because an awful event was about to befall Darwin, and that I should leave at the earliest opportunity. To my knowledge, Darwin, which admittedly is in an earthquake hot-spot, is still there. I wonder if there is a secret school for psychics, where this choking opener is taught.
You say tomato, I say fraud
Now I can read the Tarot cards myself, (once upon a time I was considered quite good at it) but have long since retired them. There was a time, however when I didn’t leave the house without drawing a card first. This was a moment of great upheaval when my life, inexplicably, crashed in around me. The cards were of course my way of trying to exert control, to make sense of the chaos unfolding around me. I suspect the pull of a fortune teller for most people is similarly at a time of trauma and uncertainty.
When I lived in north London, I got dragged along to a psychic event. I was working, at the time, for a backstreet detective agency as a fraud investigator. One of my colleagues was going through something life-changing and asked if I’d go with her. The venue was a typical church hall that smelled of biscuits & wee. Rows of women sat chattering emotionally. There were a handful of men, one in a wheelchair, notably, sitting quietly on his own. Someone got up and welcomed everyone to the event. They hit play on a portable CD player and the room sang along to Abba’s “I have a dream”. My palms began to sweat at the horror of what was unfolding.
Then the psychics were introduced, a couple from the paranormal circuit (who knew). To my surprise the wheelchair man made his way to the front of the room, with a woman who looked like Rose West. There was a long spiel about how there was no guarantee the spirits would visit us; that they would only come if we all believed hard enough (much like the benefits of Brexit). And with that Rose West’s eyes rolled back in her head; the other side were online.
What followed haunts me to this day but not in any supernatural sense. Clearly the psychics had sat in the audience long enough to work out who was most vulnerable and most likely to believe anything. They proceeded to offer pseudo advice allegedly channelled from family members who had crossed the rainbow bridge. “We’re there for you” they’d say, “and check behind the fireplace, I may or may not have left a ring there”. Death, it appears, does not improve memory. We sang the Doctor & the Medics version of “Spirit in the Sky” during which the man in the wheelchair allowed a spirit to inhabit him and stood up, to much oohing. By then end of the session, many of the vulnerable were in tears and this duo of con artists were counselling them. I was appalled. My friend, as able an investigator as me, couldn’t see it at all. She believed they were actual angels.
Occasional Oracles
Equally disturbing, I find, is the prevalence in the wellness industry of “occasional oracles”. They tend to inhabit the realm of energy healing, therapies such as Reiki. There seems to be an ether thin boundary here between therapy and soothsaying. Not all energy therapists, of course, but more than a few feel the need to tell you at the end of a session that they channelled Bob Marley. Or that your ancestors are working on your gout.
Perhaps it goes with the territory. I’ve done the Reiki training and it can be quite flimsy. In less than a couple of weeks, you can set up shop as a hands-on healer and treat people. Think about that for a second, that’s almost biblical. Within the space of a fortnight and for less than a couple hundred quid you can go from stacking shelves in Asda to healing with your own hands. That’s quite an ego trip. Unless you give someone some tangible explanation for what they might be doing in energy work (such as working with fascia or the nervous system), you are also putting them in the realm of magical thinking. It’s then not much of a stretch to go from having the hands of Avalon to claiming to be in contact with the other side and the angelic realm.
Exorcising Exceptionalism
Of course, where there’s demand, comes supply. We all have periods of uncertainty, and of loss, where we struggle to make sense of life, or to exert some control. It can be comforting to think that the spirits of loved ones are still close. That there’s life after death and a point to all the chaos. It’s also quite flattering to think that the spirits want to talk to us, to tell us we’re looking good and doing well. So, it’s no surprise that healers offer these kinds of lines and why we never really challenge them.
The therapy mystics I’ve come across are just trying to be something more than they are. In a society that glorifies celebrity and specialness, it’s no surprise that people want to be exceptional. Imagine the glory that speaking to the other side brings; of being so highly evolved that you can speak to the spirits, counsel people wisely, and effectively operate without challenge. I know it’s an oversimplification, but on a fundamental level, most occasional oracles I’ve met, have fallen into this category.
I suspect that therapy mystics, by & large, are not bad people but they often show poor judgement. How else to explain The Reiki healer who “channelled” to my hairdresser that she was married to the wrong man (and wrecked the marriage for a while). Or the lady who, on hearing that my husband’s dad had died, told us at the end of a gong bath that she had had a good old chat with him and helped him pass over. Perhaps being in touch with the other side is onerous; like the Whoopi Goldberg character in Ghost, maybe they keep you awake all night and grind you down until it’s just easier to say these things out loud without a filter. Or perhaps, depressingly, death brings us no more wisdom and when we do bridge the ethers, the best we can communicate is empty platitudes and malicious meddling. Or perhaps in their drive to be special, these mouthpieces of the dead forget the living and the real consequences their pronouncements can have.